The Mad Caliph

Have you ever heard of Caliph al-Hakim bi-Amr Allah? No?; well here is a story!

Caliph Hakim was a member of the Fatimid dynasty, and ruler of Egypt from 996 until his death in 1021. He was, to say the least, a highly eccentric individual, sometimes referred to as the Mad Caliph. Amongst other things, he prohibited the eating of grapes and the playing of chess, and ordered the people of Cairo to work at night and sleep during the day! His persecutions were real enough, though like many of his other arbitrary measures, they tottered between the gratuitously vindictive and the outright ridiculous. Christians were made to wear huge crosses and Jews a golden calf around their necks. His persecutions, moreover, also extended to Sunni Muslims.

There are other examples of Muslim persecution, the most notorious of which is probably the wholesale massacre of the Jews of Granada in southern Spain in 1066, following a particularly vicious hate campaign. Also in Spain, the fundamentalist Almoravids forcibly transported many Christians to Morocco in the twelfth century. However, it remains true, in spite of these exceptions, that there is little of the wholesale massacre, persecution, forced conversion and expulsion of minorities that was to be a recurrent theme in the history of Christian Europe.

The Paradox of Islam

Anyway, where does one begin? There is so much to admire in Islamic culture and history; in their architecture, their philosophy and in their art. When Europe was only just emerging from what was once widely known as ‘the Dark Ages’, Islam was moving steadily towards the fullest expression of a unique civilization. I’ve seen the Mezquita, the former mosque in Cordoba in southern Spain, built when the old Moorish kingdom of al-Andalusia was at its height, and it truly is breathtaking.

It’s as well to remember, though, that militant Islam is not an aberration; the religion has always carried the sword, in the one hand, and in pen, in the other. It’s really a matter of degree. Arab civilization, in particular, has been in relative decline for centuries. The period when it was at the forefront of human progress is long gone. The advance of western imperialism in the nineteenth century, and neo-imperialism in the twentieth, was the occasion for what might be referred to as ‘great reappraisal’; that things had got so bad because Islam was not Islam enough. The emergence of the conservative Wahhabi movement and Islamic Jihad are but two symptoms of this phenomenon.

Have you read the Koran? Well, I have, and it’s altogether quite revealing.

“Lying is the worst sin in Islam”

Something odd is happening in the Islamic Republic of Iran. There is a presidential election on Friday, though there is nothing odd or unusual in that. The oddity, rather, is that the campaign itself actually has some life, has something of the ruthless cut and thrust of-how shall I say this?-a genuine western-style democracy. Did you hear something? Could it possibly have been the sound of some grim-faced Ayatollah exploding in his grave?

The contest, of course, is between the hard-line incumbent, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, on the one hand, and his reform-minded opponents, Medhi Karroubi and Mir-Hossein Mousavi, on the other. All candidates have had the prior approval of the puppet-master of the regime, the Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Aly Khameini.

I assume he must also have approved the principle of television debates between the contenders. In any case television debates there have been, and-oh my-what debates! Real debates, yes, with the levels of nastiness and assaults on personal integrity that we in the west may be used to but the denizens of the Islamic paradise are not. It’s drawing huge crowds, truly it is.

The logic is a little difficult to understand, insofar as this is a regime based on a supposition of unity, of consensus on the political and religious fundamentals. Perhaps the thinking was that Ahmadinejad the Mighty would be able to breathe orthodox fire over such alien concepts as modernisation and reform. But the Mighty One did not stick to grand principles; he got personal, and his opponents got personal right back!

Round one opened with Ahmadinejad accusing the wife of Hossein Mousavi of faking her degree, a pretty low punch. Not true, said Mr. Mousavi, who came back with a left-hook, a hard one: the President was a disgrace to Iran, yes, a disgrace, because of his aggressive foreign policy. Learning nothing from this, Ahmadinejad then accused Medhi Karroubi, himself a cleric, of corruption, to which he responded by lecturing the president on his personal vices-“Lying”, he was told, “is the worst sin in Islam.”

This is going down well in the streets of Teheran, where people are not used to such levels of political excitement. One supporter of the reformist movement said, “We’ve never seen anything like it before. To see a sitting president being criticised on television over every single thing that he has done is just amazing. It’s great to watch.” I bet it is!

Will things ever be the same again, one has to ask? Perhaps it’s all the fault of the Great Satan. :-))